MY INITIAL REPORTING on the DIA memo that in 2012 predicts that the West would fuel the rise of “an Islamic State” in Syria caused enough of a global media stir that it prompted DIA Public Affairs to respond to my questions.

But as Middle East Eye reported, the DIA’s response was disappointing yet still somewhat revealing:

When asked repeatedly by journalist and ex-US marine Brad Hoff to dispel claims that the West aligned itself with IS or ISIS at some point in Syria, the DIA’s official response was telling: “No comment.”

While major foreign media like The Guardian, The Sunday Times of London, Der Spiegel, RT News, UK Daily Mail, and London Review of Books ran stories and prominent editorials that featured serious discussion of the document, their mainstream media equivalents in the U.S. didn’t touch it. To my knowledge, outlets like CNN, FOX, NBC, Newsweek, NPR, Washington Post, etc… have yet to even quote from the specific document either through broadcast or even in online articles.

Perhaps it will take hearing from the chief of the DIA that was in place at the time the intelligence report was drafted to finally inform the broader American public?

Thankfully, this will happen in a forthcoming Al Jazeera English interview with retired US Lt. General Michael Flynn, former head of the Pentagon’s DIA and senior intelligence officer with the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Al Jazeera’s press release announcing the interview entitled “Is the US to blame for ISIL?” indicates that Flynn is asked specifically about the document in the prerecorded show set to air July 31:

Publicly commenting for the first time on a previously-classified August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo, which had predicted “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (…) this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want” and confirmed that “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the former DIA chief told Head to Head that “the [Obama] Administration” didn’t “listen” to these warnings issued by his agency’s analysts.

“I don’t know if they turned a blind eye,” he said. “I think it was a decision, I think it was a willful decision.”

“Is the US to blame for ISIL?”with Michael Flynn will be broadcast on Friday 31st July at 20.00 GMT and will be repeated on Saturday 1st August at 12.00 GMT, Saturday 2nd August at 01.00 GMT and Monday 3rd August at 06.00 GMT.

For continuing coverage of the DIA Islamic State document, follow Taylor Tyler’s excellent reporting at Headline and Global News.